Designer: Smartphones have outgrown average pants pocket

Alexey Zhukov

10:20, April 29, 2013

The trend toward larger screens in smartphones is having an effect on more than battery life and image quality: it's also making clothes designers rethink their stitches. The head of global design for Dockers has told FoxNews.com that the increasing size of smartphone screens has led to the clothing company retooling some of its design work in order to accommodate the larger devices. Increasingly, clothing designers need to have a smartphone on hand lest their customers be unable to fit their favorite gadgets into their favorite pants.

“We recently increased the size of our ‘coin pocket,’ which is the pocket-within-the-pocket on the wearer’s right, from 3x3 to 4x4 to accommodate today’s larger phones,” Conklyn told FoxNews.com..

Making sure that the latest phones fit into the company's pants pockets has become an integral part of the design process for Dockers. The standard pants pocket is about 13 inches deep, and the rise of devices like Samsung's Galaxy Mega and competitors like Huawei's Ascend Mate is causing designers to keep an eye on just how these devices will fit into clothing.

For other companies, smartphone growth is less of a concern. A Banana Republic design chief tells Fox News that the company is so accustomed to considering technology in its designs that it has not yet had to design around a smartphone.

Since Apple's iPhone revolutionized the smartphone industry, screen size has become a major factor in customer choice. Samsung's Galaxy S series began at 2.53 inches wide by 4.82 inches tall, and this year's Galaxy S4 is 2.83 by 5.5. Additionally, the rise of phablets like the aforementioned Galaxy Mega and Samsung's increasingly popular Galaxy Note series has also helped to push device sizes ever higher.

Designers don't expect the large screen trend to end any time soon, so they're recommending users look to their shirt and jacket pockets if they find there's just not enough real estate in their pants. One thing they appear to agree on, though: don't go with a belt clip.

"Once, it's true, they were the show-off badge of the early adopter of the PDA," Esquire fashion designer Nick Sullivan said. "But rarely are these people also interested in style."